You are in the current BP disaster ROV, number 76. Number 75 is here.
Please DO NOT Rec this diary, rather REC THE MOTHERSHIP instead. She needs your love to stay afloat.
Please be kind to kossacks with bandwidth issues. Please do not post images or videos. Again, many thanks for this.
PLEASE visit Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier's diaries to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
For a description of the mothership/ROV liveblogging process, check out this thread.
This is where you want to be for discussion, worrying, tearing up, and caring for each other. It's also where you're welcome to be angry and scream and curse and cry and rant at the criminal negligence and greed that have brought us all together. Most importantly, though, it's where we can learn from those kossaks among us (I'll not name names for abject fear of leaving one of you out, but you know who you are.) who bring the light of knowledge - sometimes with heat, sometimes without it - and teach us about what's happening beneath our Gulf of Mexico. I would like to ask that you treat each other with dignity. This process, watching crimes against humanity and the earth being carried out on multi-screen displays, is harrowing and painful. I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and to this day I think of it as "my" beach. And I have to step away: to go for a run, or throw a baseball with my neighbors' kids, or sit on the back deck with my cat and a beer. Please do whatever it is you do to "center" yourselves, and to care of yourselves.
BP put up a video explaining the LMRP procedure and the future plans.
Go to the Deepwater Horizon Data Summary for a wealth of actual data from the Department of Energy.
The BOB and pressure drawings are viewable here. The CAD drawings come highly recommended by the techies among us. h/t Claudius Bombarnac.
Breaking News:
This is what BP DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE. The following images are guaranteed to make you SICK AT HEART.
These images are not for the faint of heart - DO NOT VIEW THEM LIGHTLY.
Really, I mean it. Hold somebody's hand. Grab a tissue.
Please DO NOT Rec this diary, Rec the Mothership here.
cosmic debris put together a comprehensive list of links on oil health and safety info:
Thanks to dov12348 for publishing a diary on Oil Terminology.
Here is a tutorial on the sources of pressure on the well
H/t to Pluto for finding this:
Here is an excellent image of what is supposed to exist under the wellhead. Take the comments from Halliburton with a grain of salt since this is part of their "blame those two" PR campaign.
Images giving a rough idea of what's in place now and status of the kill wells
The video feeds we are watching:
==== ROV Feeds =====
44287/44668 - OceanInterventionROV1
44838/45135 - OceanInterventionROV2
46566/54013 - Viking_Poseidon_ROV1
55030/56646 - Viking_Poseidon_ROV2
31499/31500 - Boa_Deep_C_ROV_1
22458/23729 - Boa_Deep_C_ROV_2
45685/49182 - Skandi_ROV1 (BP player shows wrong feed)
45683/45684 - Skandi_ROV2
47175/21144 - Enterprise_ROV_1
21145/21327 - Enterprise_ROV_2
37235/37270 - Q4000_ROV1
35523/35624 - Q4000_ROV2
Possibly outdated or redundant links (from The Oil Drum):
46245 - BP "Official" #1 (primary)
46260 - BP "Official" #2 (secondary)
46661 - BP mystery feed #1
46663 - BP mystery feed #2
Restricted to web browser based viewing:
CNN Video Streams Note: multi-view is sometimes unavailable.
PBS (fewer security issues than some others)
BP videos Links to all available live feeds from BP.
WKRG - Mobile/Pensacola (Contains link for an iPhone app at the bottom.)
ABC 7 Chicago Live Video Multiple ROV Camera Views (h/t to temptxan for the great find).
Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth):
The best multi-view feed Be patient as load time may take a bit.
Markey's multi-view page
Vote For America's awesome clickable multi-view Courtesy of one of our very own Kossacks.
A multi-view Contains feeds from BP, C-SPAN-2, WKRG, and PBS
See this thread for more info on using video feeds and on linking to video feeds.
Again, to keep bandwidth down please do not post images or videos.
Links, courtesy of several Kossacks
- US Fish & Wildlife Service Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Response h/t to CindyMax Left side of page has "Daily Wildlife Collection Reports" that details wildlife found oiled, alive, deceased, and/or released.
- Visualize the spill
- Nola.com
- dov12348's Ocean currents, wind currents, and hurricane links
- World newspapers oil section
- The Oil Drum
- Oil & Gas Journal
- Offshore Magazine
- Petroleum News
- Your Oil and Gas News
- World Oil
- Administration response to spill.
- Donate to SkyTruth here. SkyTruth helps environmental NGOs use remote sensing (pictures taken from space) and digital mapping to improve their scientific credibility, conservation decisionmaking, communications and public outreach.
- Images of the Oilpacalypse, from Tomtech.
- Visit the Oil Spill Crisis Map to see where oil, mousse, tar balls, and eau de crude have been reported on the Gulf coast.
- The BP Deepwater Horizon Unified Command official website. Wherein you can read latest post warning of employment scams associated with the event and much more from the folks handling this.
- Timeline of response here.
- Timeline of the Event from April 20th being maintained by blogroots.
- Department of Energy BP Deepwater Horizon Spill site updates.
- Bit Tooth Energy blog (technical discussions) by the famed Heading Out, well known key poster on The Oil Drum blog site.
- Department of Interior BP Deepwater Horizon Response site provides updates, reports, data, links to pictures, etc.
- Rigzone for specific disaster news and news about the offshore industry, in general.
- BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Quantitative Data - from whitis
- Courtesy of profgoose here is a list of links from The Oil Drum links on newer developments, etc
- Maritime ship tracking -- courtesy of johnsonwax
- U.S. begins criminal investigation into oil spil
- NOAA Spill tracking site
- ERMA: Environmental Response Management Application
- BP has a good diagram of the cutting process that partially succeeded
- Documents show BP chose a less-expensive, less-reliable method for completing well in Gulf oil spill
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The 81st annual Biloxi Blessing of the Fleet was held last weekend, and I'd imagine, though I couldn't be there, that this year's fais do do and parade of boats was a little more subdued than usual. The Blessing of the Fleet is an old tradition. Inspiration for the practice is drawn from the Christian Bible, and became a common practice in Mediterranean countries. Many of the Coast's European immigrants came from the former Yugoslavia, particularly Dalmatia. These immigrants brought the practice with them, and Biloxi's first Blessing was held in 1929.
At the first blessing, and for many years after, captains tied their boats together and the priest walked along, blessing each boat and captain in hopes for a prosperous season. Either before or after the ceremony (it varied in the early days) Mass is held at St. Michaels, a beautiful and distinctive church on Highway 90 near Point Cadet. In the round sanctuary, with dawn's first rays creeping through the stained glass windows depicting the apostles as fishermen, deaths are mourned, births into fishing families are celebrated, and the homily usually centers on the bounty of our waters and the men who have labored to bring it to coast tables. Across the years, the ceremony has grown into a more festive event spanning the first weekend in June. There is the mass, the commemorative wreath is dropped into the Sound, and either a representative of St. Michaels or the Biloxi Diocese stands on a specially-constructed platform and blesses the boats as they parade by.
More years ago than I care to remember, I rode along with friends on the Inspiration. While the Inspiration was a pleasure motor/sail and bore little resemblance to the majority of working boats in the procession, she was the newest member of a friend's family, purchased after he'd been in remission from leukemia for five years. "A survivor's gift," Stewart used to say.
With brightly-festooned rigging and flags lashed at every conceivable point, the boats look like a slow-floating current of flowers on the water. We crawled along, streamers and flags cracking in the breeze, and Mississippi's outrageous (or outrageously delicious) heat and humidity helping us sweat without lifting a finger. We were blessed and sprinkled by Bishop Howze, and we went on about our business. It was a beautiful day, one that was rich in history and replete with the sights and sounds of life on the water. And I hate to say, it was one I took for granted then. Even after Katrina, I never gave much thought to the idea that the Sound - and the Gulf - would be that much different when I was 40 or 60 or 80. Sure, I thought - "the buildings will be different, and for a while I won't know where the hell I am on HWY 90, but the fiddlers and horseshoe crabs and croakers and starfish will always be there." Right? And now I look back on that day and wish I could recapture the scent and sight of that June weekend. We had cold boiled shrimp and crawfish etoufee so hot one of the guys shotgunned a beer - the first time I'd seen such a feat performed. We went through the processional and took Inspiration out to Chandeleur, where we fished and ate and drank while participating in Stewart's home-grown Jimmy Buffett trivia contest. Although by that time I was the youngest person on board by eight years and was just short of being old enough to have consumed the prodigious quantities of alcohol I had enjoyed, I took the "trophy" - a copy of the "Unofficial" Buffett Biography by Steve Eng.
That day and the ceremony around it, will be forever wrapped up in sitting around my friend Stewart while he labored through the chord changes of the Buffett songbook, singing under the stars, and finally sleeping on deck to wake with the sun. We were too wrapped up in our own pleasure to fully appreciate the gravity of Fr. Michael's Mass, or Bishop Howze's words as he dropped the wreath into the Sound, but we certainly appreciated the beauty and rich bounty of our coast. And, rest assured, if I had that day to do over, appreciating the gravity of the ceremony is the only thing I'd change.
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Previous liveblog ROV diaries:
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 75 - conchita
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 74 - Lorinda Pike
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 73 - khowell
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 72 - quinn
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 71 - alkalinesky
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 70 - yawnimawke
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 69 - JasperJohns
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 68 - Tomtech
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 67 - peraspera
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 66 - JasperJohns
BOP Oilpocalypse ROV Diary #65 - Digitalmuse
BP Oilpocalypse Liveblog ROV 64: The Clean Up and Lasting Effects - hester
BP Liveblog ROV 63 - heart of a quince
...
For a more complete list of Liveblog diaries, see the current mothership.